Inland reaction cool to immigration detention centers

[helderheid]

08:25 AM PDT on Wednesday, March 28, 2007

By SHARON McNARY and BEN GOAD
The Press-Enterprise

Three former Inland military airports could be used as federal transportation hubs for deportation flights returning immigrants to their home countries, but the surrounding land is not suitable to house immigrant detainees, local officials said.

As part of a massive overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, a bill introduced last week includes a provision to double space for detainees to 40,000, build 20 new detention centers on former military bases, and establish three additional U.S. Marshals Service flight hubs.

The detention centers and transportation hubs would cost about $3 billion, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates.

The bipartisan bill, H.R.1645, is a wide-ranging assortment of immigration-law changes. It aims to tighten border security, increase enforcement of laws against employing illegal immigrants, and add a large new guest-worker program that would permit millions of undocumented immigrants to stay and work in the United States and eventually become citizens.

The Riverside-San Bernardino area is home to 215,000 undocumented immigrants, nearly 9 percent of the 2.5 million living in California, according to the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan policy study group whose estimates are widely used in the national debate over immigration.

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